Apparently the mud mt. dam that controls the flows on White was lowered from 1600 cfs to 200cfs in a matter of hours, thousands of coho, chinook (ESA Listed), and steelhead smolts were trapped in side channels and became stranded and died. The Army Corps lowered the flows so that PSE could do some routine maintainence on the flume that feeds Lk. Taps. I heard about this by word of mouth from some of the WDFW biologist.

This story will probably be in the weekend papers.

Just a sad sad story about a river that was finally starting to come back thanks to alot of hard work from all sorts of political and private groups

BD

Is that even legal, I mean can they just adjust the flows to whatever they want no matter what the consequences?

The dam is controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers. I'm unsure whether the Army Corps is soley responsibe, it could of just been individual human error.

BD

Someone educate me. I thought that if something was ESA Listed that no actions could be taken to endanger or harm it?

Todd do you know?

Geeeeeeez,

In order to be compliant with ESA, the Corps has established "work windows" such that any in-water work on watersheds where Puget Sound chinook are present (or any other listed species) can only occur during periods when fish are not present in large numbers. For most streams in Pierce County, the work window is July 15 to August 31 to avoid spawning periods and juvenile rearing and outmigration periods. This supposedly is the only time you can do in-water work below the ordinary high water mark.

I imagine they obtained a waiver of some type, perhaps an emergency action, but what would be the rush concerning general maintenance work? NMFS should drop on somebody here. Seems like a clear violation of the ESA take rules.

Get a rope!

Its true, check it out!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134674183_fishkill12m0.html

What gets me is that the Salmon are smart enough to travel thousands of miles and return to the same spot to spawn.

Yet they are not smart enough to retreat down river a little when the water is falling in the side channels.

Fish are well adapted to respond favorably to natural changes in flow, emphasis on natural. Since when does dropping flow by 85% over a 12 hour period constitute natural. Those juveniles didn't have much of a chance.

I wish that news piece mentioned the work windows and why they weren't considered. Russ Ladley mentioned the adult migrations during the spring and summer (winter steelhead followed by springers, then fall chinook). Lowering a river for a half a day would probably not effect adults on their spawning migrations nearly as much as when juveniles are in the stream. Adults don't travel up side channels. They rarely travel up the lesser of two channels when a river splits. And since they're migrating as opposed to spawning, they would basically hunker down in a deep spot and wait it out. That's why the work windows for these rivers is in mid-late summer. Its after the juvenile outmigration and before substantial spawning of adults occurs.

I smell a lawsuit....